The Los Cerritos Wetlands Oil Consolidation and Restoration Project provides an example of how public-private land swap arrangements can be aligned with environmental restoration and protection plans, and used to advance longer-term visions for managed retreat. The Los Cerritos Wetlands Complex, located in Long Beach, California, has faced decades of degradation from human activities and development resulting in the original wetland size of 2,400 acres being reduced to a few hundred acres of wetlands area today. Much of this remaining wetland area is privately owned and used to conduct oil operations. The Los Cerritos Wetlands Oil Consolidation and Restoration Project would transfer 154 acres of privately owned wetlands to public ownership as part of a land swap arrangement. Specifically, as a part of the land swap, the 154 acres currently used for oil production will be exchanged for five acres of wetlands currently owned by the Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority (LCWA). The land swap aims to restore a major portion of the wetlands via a mitigation bank, increase public access, reduce the oil production footprint and consolidate operations, and provide economic benefits from increased oil production revenue. Regardless, the land swap plan also involves a number of environmental and social tradeoffs that state and local decisionmakers have had to address, such as an expanded lifespan for the oil-production facilities, and a continuing or increased amount of greenhouse gas emissions and risk for potential oil spills, that can provide lessons and recommendations for other local governments considering land swaps as a legal tool to facilitate retreat in coastal areas.